James West | Building the Future of Crypto Exchange | The Curious Learners Ep. 34

Hi everyone. My guest today is James West. He is the CEO of Globe, which is a crypto futures exchange. James and I agreed to talk about building a crypto exchange a while back and we kept rescheduling since then. Finally, by coincidence, we happened to record the episode on the day FTX filed for bankruptcy!

We talked about James' take on what really happened at FTX , its impact on confidence in crypto markets and of course what he is building at Globe.

Here are some highlights from the show.

- What did really happen at FTX? In one sentence?
They were gambling with customer deposits. But didn't expect them to have that much leverage, which created a big hole on the books.

- Are we now in an extended crypto winter? 2-year timeframe?
It will certainly make a big hit in confidence. As for the timeframe, I actually get bullish when everyone else thinks 2-year. It will be shorter.

- What was your entrance into crypto?
I come from math background. Did research during PhD on a variety of fields including physics, machine learning and biostatistics. After publishing 8 papers in a year, moved into investing. And finally got interested in crypto in 2017-2018.

- How did you approach building Globe?
Initially thought of building a market maker for an exchange with perps. However, after seeing the the way that exchange was working, decided to build a better one , hence Globe. It was mostly foreseeing a future with more sophisticated trading.

- What are the key building blocks of a crypto exchange?
Fundamental elements are of course liquidity, usability, range of products, compliance. But, dealing with the initial liquidity / bootstrapping that is one of the biggest challenges. Critical to have your own engineering team vs. white-label product, because in the latter you can't innovate.

- What is a snapshot of Globe today?
150 thousand customers. Total traded to date around $10 billion. Geography mix had been impacted by the China ban, but now they are coming back. Profitable pretty much since the launch. Earlier did institutional asset management services and we were at some point the biggest defi yield farming protocol for Silicon Valley.

- What metrics do you follow most closely?
We obviously follow all the classic metrics in terms of conversion, trading, active users, etc. But the most important to me is getting an email from a customer who says they really like the product.

- What is the most important product that you are focused on?
Mobile is a big focus for us. Working on the Android launch.

- What needs to happen in crypto for a more visible and brighter future?
I think it already has a brighter future. For example, stablecoins solve real problems. Though one challenge there could be the introduction of central bank digital currencies.

- What are you most curious about these days?
Generative AI! No, no angle of it in crypto for now :)